Va. Tech Shooter's Sister Works With State Department

Princeton Graduate Once Interned at U.S. Embassy in Bangkok

By KIRIT RADIA and ARIANE DEVOGUE

April 17, 2007 

The sister of Seung-hui Cho, the man accused of carrying out the worst day of violence on a college campus in U.S. history, works out of the State Department as a contractor, government officials told ABC News.

Sun-Kyung Cho, the shooter's older sister, is listed in the State Department directory as a personnel assistant at the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, but sources say she reports to McNeil Technologies, which is one of the many administrative/managerial support contractors used for Iraq reconstruction management projects.

Ms. Cho graduated from Princeton University in 2004 with an undergraduate degree in economics. This evening, Princeton is planning a candlelight vigil in remembrance of those who lost their lives at Virginia Tech Monday.

In an interview with the Princeton Weekly Bulletin, Cho said that in 2003, she spent the "most amazing three months of my life" as an unpaid intern in the economics section of the U.S. embassy in Bangkok. According to the online article, Cho also interned the previous summer at the State Department's international labor office.

She filed a story for the campus newspaper and also volunteered for a Princeton organization that was formed to create social and cultural programs for young people affected by the attacks of Sept. 11.

While at Princeton, Cho wrote her 54-page thesis on "Wage Earning: A Case Study of the Hmong and Korean Populations in the State of California." Before attending Princeton, she graduated from Centreville High School in 2000.

Phone messages left with McNeil Technologies were not immediately returned.